Burst Angel: Someone To Protect
by BetweenheavenandHell
Summary: Investigating a new street drug named Blaze, Meg will come across more than she ever bargained for...
1. Prologue: Stand in Angel

**A/N:** Two years after Jo died, Meg has taken on her mantle as Tokyo's top bounty hunter. But things are never so simple. Hired to investigate a new street drug named Blaze by a mysterious benefactor, Meg will find a lot more than she bargained for. Can she stay alive long enough to keep her promise to Jo and find someone to protect?

**

* * *

Burst Angel: Someone To Protect**

Prologue: Stand-in Angel

* * *

**--- Name:** Miles, Donavan

**Age:** 34

**Place of Origin: **Unknown

**Offence/Crime(s):** Petty theft, robbery, arson, assault with a deadly weapon

**Status:** Pending termination under zero tolerance policy, Counter Crime Act (4th Revision)---

Somewhere in the rusted and discarded innards of RAPT's central executive mainframe. In the remnants of what had once been the headquarters of the stabilizing force of modern Tokyo before it had been reduced to so much rubble a little over two years ago. A solitary screen hung suspended over a yawning chasm by a thin stretch of wire, still displaying the last update on the criminal its operator had been reviewing just before a large section of the ceiling above him drove him and most of his console through the floor during its realise from its former duties.

The screen flickered briefly as one of its wires eased a little closer towards snapping, eventually compensating for the reduced current and returning the display to normal.

Had it the capacity to do so, it might have realised how pointless its continued adherence was, and allowed itself to fall, but such things are beyond a simple monitor to think on.

Still, it would continue to do what it was made to do until the display of this information became unnecessary.

Little could it have known its purpose would soon be fulfilled.

* * *

Miles Donavan was not a native of Tokyo, or even Japan for that matter.

His exact place of birth was long forgotten, even by him thanks to the use of a wonderful new drug he had discovered while here on vacation with a small group of friends.

Blaze was ingested into the body via the eyeball, and actually absorbed into the protein structure of the irises before entering the bloodstream.

The effects varied from person to person, but the generalresults to expect included a boost in mental capacity, pushing the most average of people into the realms of gifted or genius level intelligence, but only for the first few minutes.

The drug didn't stop there however, it continued to increase the mental faculties of the user until they began to surpass the body, what some users had described afterwards as the development of a meta-intellect, a kind of borderline psychic ability that made it seem as if the observer was able to influence the world or problems around them without physically interfacing in any fashion.

It was the greatest rush anyone could ever hope to experience, a sense of expansion and wonder so vast it usually overwhelmed everyone who used Blaze, leading to blackouts, hallucinations or in extreme cases, brain death as the mind shutdown under the strain.

Miles could only wish for a shot of the stuff now, his eyedropper had long since run dry and he was fresh out of inspiration.

As he crouched behind the remains of a burned out car in the cool evening air, the sun edging closer to twilight by the second; he tugged his flimsy coat a little tighter around his scrawny shivering body, racking one hand through greasy blond locks as wide, bloodshot green eyes darted back and forth across the barren, dusty landscape of the junkyard he was currently hiding in.

There was no sign of her yet, but there hadn't been the first time she had shown up either. One moment he had been alone in the small alley he had then called home, looking mournfully at his lonely dropper and wishing he had had the forethought to use the last of it to come up with a plan to make a little cash, the next _she_ had been standing over him, staring down at him with those sad blue eyes hidden amongst a mix of long red hair and fury collar of her thick red bomber jacket.

Even without Blaze kicking up his faculties, he had no trouble recognizing the rather large and sinister looking guns secured in the heavy looking holsters on either side of her shapely hips, in themselves making up the majority of the covering for her lower body.

Deciding that the guns were reason enough not to stare for to long he had plastered on his most appeasing smile and tried a little civil conversation, not noticing at first that she wasn't responding to a word he said.

When his mouth eventually wound down, she had only asked him one question: "Who is selling Blaze?".

Just that and nothing else.

She didn't exactly strike him as the drug type. Hair and general appearance were too well organised, poise too confident and ready, speaking of someone at the top of their game, not a person who is only firing half their neurons because their brain is fried.

Suspecting that she might not have the best of intentions toward his dealer, bounty hunters were becoming more and more numerous in wake of RAPT's fall, the citizens and even the government needing a trained force ready to counteract the latest waves of crime, Miles had pretended he didn't know what she was talking about.

She had smiled sweetly at him, making her look so much like a young girl out of her element for a moment, that he didn't notice her draw her gun until she had crouched down him front of him and placed it against his forehead.

As he had trembled, she had quietly told him how much she usually liked acting, chatting about some of her favourite actors like they were old friends, not a homeless washout and a gun totting child.

She was young, that was something he noticed even in that situation, probably not even in her twenties yet, but her eyes, even as she giggled at her own candour, held the look of someone who has had something very dear to them taken away.

When she tired of her game, she asked him again, making it clear when all he did was open and close his mouth silently that she wouldn't hesitate to kill him, and childish features or not, her eyes told him she was serious.

Apparently there was still a viable bounty out on him, his records having survived the destruction of RAPT somehow, and she planned to collect unless he offered her information on a bigger target.

He had spilled everything he knew at that point, which was very little, and she had let him go.

That had been two days ago.

He had been on the run since then, not wanting to risk her deciding he was better dead anyway and returning to finish the job.

However it appeared all of his concerns were for naught, as she had found him again anyway.

Why, he didn't known, and would prefer never to find out, which was why he was hiding here.

His head snapped around as something tumbled noisily down one of the mountains of scrape around him, echoing loudly amongst walls of mechanical refuse and making it impossible for him to figure out either the source, or location of the noise.

He hunched a little further down.

Was she out there somewhere, taunting him? Why bother, he was nobody. Even if his information had been inaccurate, was there a reason for her to come after him personally like this?

Was he worth more than he realised or was it because he had dared to utter the _other_ name for Blaze, a name none of them were supposed to know and were forbidden to use?

"Thousands of questions hide a single answer", he muttered to himself, eyes feral as he tried to discern whether he was still truly alone in this silent monument to industrial malfunction.

Another crash, this one closer spooked him from his cover like a startled animal, sending him sprinting across the open courtyard, arms pumping frantically as his poorly conditioned body huffed and wheezed, straining to keep up with demands it hadn't faced for months.

A single shot range out amongst the stillness, shattering all hopes of escape even as it ripped through bone and tendon before exiting via the front of his lower leg in a minor shower of blood.

Pain paralysed his throat as he tried to scream and everything pitched to one side as shock removed his ability to process what he was seeing and experiencing.

He felt the impact, jarring his wounded leg and sending him into fresh spasms of agony as he rolled over to clutch at it, instinctively attempting to staunch the bleeding.

He cursed aloud, at volumes his scratchy voice was ill suited for, only stopping when exhaustion robbed him of the power of speech.

"I'm sorry for doing that", he froze, emerald eyes lighting on the source of the voice as she crouched near him, monster of a gun in one hand, and her chin resting on the other, her face seeming genuinely apologetic, lending a surreal air to the whole encounter.

"W…Why?", he managed to choke out.

Again she looked sorry for a moment, but this time her face hardened before she spoke.

"You lied to me. There was no one at the location you gave me. I warned you what would happen if you lied… I hate liars", her gaze turned distant for a second, before she shook her head resolutely, returning the full intensity of her sapphire gaze on him.

Coming from a face like hers, it should have been like watching a kitten attempt to appear intimidating… but Miles felt only fear.

"I-I'm s-sorry, I didn't k-know he wasn't there a-anymore", he pleaded with her silently to believe him.

She nodded slowly, taking him by surprise as she smiled at him reassuringly, "It's ok, I believe you".

As she stood, the look on her face saying she was lost in thought, the blond reached into the tattered remains of his coat, his hand closing over the grip of the small object concealed therein and levelling it at the bounty hunter.

"D-don't move", his voice shook as he tried to maintain his aim, the ancient glock in his hand wavering slightly, "P-put your g-gun down".

The look she gave him was unidentifiable, but she made no move to either escape his sights or to disarm herself.

"I was going to let you go…", she spoke in a voice he could barely hear, "Why? Why do something that means throwing your life away when you could just walk away? Can anyone explain it to me… please".

Miles had no idea what she was talking about, but he knew what would happen if it ever got out he had betrayed his supplier and the rather unsavoury man ever found out about it.

If he didn't kill her, he was as good as dead.

She hefted her weapon, pointing the barrel square between his eyes.

"Don't, I'll shoot, I mean it!", his voice was bordering on hysterical as she surveyed him in a disinterested fashion, only her eyes ever betraying the unfeeling mask.

"Are you sure you can? It's not as easy for us as we think, taking the life of another…you never really realise it until you have no other choice", her aim was steady even as his arm began to protest, shivering and shaking profusely.

He barked a laugh, not knowing what he found funny but unable to stop himself.

The wind picked up, tussling her long auburn tresses as it trailed out the lengths pf the scarf she wore behind her like a pair of cotton wings, the setting sun behind her making her seem to glow with an unearthly radiance as he lay in her shadow.

Miles was dumbstruck by the image, all thoughts of resistance banished in an instant.

"An Angel…", he whispered reverently, feeling the grip on his weapon loosening.

With the sun behind her, he couldn't see her face, but her voice was full of sorrow when she spoke.

"No…I'm just standing in for one…", there was the sound of a hammer being cocked back.

Unable to hold back any longer, Miles let loose the bubbling laughter that had been welling up inside him, letting it overrun his drug addled mind.

His gun hit the floor with a puff of dust and a dull _thud_, as his mirth rang out in the evening air, dancing with madness.

His vision blurred as the tears ran down his cheeks.

The hammer fell, and the world vanished in an instant of pain and a clap of thunder.

* * *

As the criminal's lifeless body hit the dirt, bouncing lightly before going still, Meg lowered her weapon, the muzzle of the gun still smoking lightly even as the musical tinkle of the round casing striking the ground filtered in over the ringing left over from the discharge.

Wordlessly, she stared at the corpse of her bounty, not really registering the dull throbbing in her wrist caused by the recoil of the oversized handgun.

It started as a small shiver in her upper arm, an unwilling clenching and relaxing of her bicep that rapidly expanded, soon encompassing her entire arm.

The weight of her gun fell from her unresponsive hand, clattering loudly before coming to a rest by her feet.

"Why…", she whispered to the breeze, her words unheeded be the effaces of rotten steel around her.

A single tear traced a solitary path over one pale cheek.

"Why can't I do this, without crying?".

* * *

There was a flurry of electrical activity as the RAPT database processed the information being uploaded into its core system from an external outlet, the impersonal software taking no note of the personalised algorithms or the display picture of smiling, chibi, pony-tailed girl as the foreign program proceeded to bypass all of its security protocols as it had time and time before.

The update complete, it sent a message to the appropriate station and in a nanosecond the display was updated with the new information.

--- **Name:** Miles, Donavan **Age:** 34 

**Place of Origin: **Unknown

**Offence/Crime(s):** Petty theft, robbery, arson, assault with a deadly weapon

**Status:** Post-Human: Terminated…---

There was a sharp crack as the few remaining cords snapped, this new image vanishing as all power and data input to the monitor was cut off.

The terminal sighed as it powered down, releasing heat as it plummeted to its long deserved rest.

* * *

---Author Notes---

I watched this series a while ago, and recently brought the DVD's so I could view it again and found myself inspired to dabble in the realm of fiction for this universe after a long and ongoing stint writing exclusively Love Hina based stories.

Obviously this is only a prologue so that explains the rather brief nature of this segment, but things should pick up in Chapter 1.

R and R people

Till next time, Betweenheavenandhell


	2. Chapter 1: Fragile

**A/N:** Full chapter, thank you all for your patience thus far. Also, those waiting for the final chapter of "Children of Ice and Fire", I'm working on it tonight and tomorrow, so it should be up sometime Monday, work permitting etc.

* * *

Chapter One: Fragile

Meg swiped at the last of her tears with a loud _sniff,_ her face resuming its usual lacklustre expression, slightly distorted by red-rimed blue eyes.

She stooped, scooping up her weapon and holstering it, the proximity sensor in the clasp opening the light weight container and closing again after the gun had been deposited, meaning all Meg had to do was close the leather strap over the top.

A chill wind cut through the metal valley she found herself standing in…or perhaps shivering in would have been more apt.

As she tried to tug the coat Jo had left her all those years ago a little lower, the red head couldn't help but wonder just how her friend had put up with running around like this no matter the weather.

Attempting to walk while holding the coat as low as it would go wasn't easy, but it was better than developing frostbite in areas best not mentioned in polite conversation.

The trip home was uneventful, those on the train giving the scantily clad young woman with the rather large guns a wide berth, though it didn't stop them muttering amongst themselves, wondering aloud what she needed such monstrous weapons for, and if it had anything to do with the fact she appeared to have been crying recently.

At least Meg could rest safe in the knowledge that such observations were the very reason that even as Tokyo's top bounty hunter, she didn't need to fear being spotted by someone. When most people found out they just laughed at her like she was a small girl with an overactive imagination.

She'd once asked someone why that was, shortly before she'd killed him, and he'd told her she didn't have the eyes of a killer, confident she wouldn't pull the trigger.

She wasn't sure who had been more shocked when she had.

"Not all of us find it easy or fun", she murmured under her breath, drawing a variety of strange looks from her fellow passengers as the train pulled into her station.

Leaving the confused stares of the others behind, she disembarked, her feet carrying her on automatic as she made her way out onto the streets, weaving her way back and forth through the milling, faceless crowd as she trod the same path she had for the past year.

Taking back alleys and access-ways to save time and cut down on the number of people she had to interact with, Meg soon found herself on the last leg of her journey, climbing swiftly but surely up the rusted fire escape with practiced ease and swinging a leg over the rim of an open window.

She paced the dangerously creaking halls, mentally checking off numbers until she reached the room she was looking for.

If anyone had seen it, they might have wondered how anyone could enter this room. The handle was missing, just smooth wood in its place.

Running her hand across the top of the doorframe, Meg located the small switch she was looking for and flipped it, the door swinging inward with a tiny click.

Another security precaution that went along with her 'natural' defence. As she stepped inside, she could make out the soft glint of the inch thick reinforced steel that was concealed by the door's wooden exterior, just in case someone came to the right place looking for her, and tried to enter without invitation.

She closed the door, sliding the various locks and deadbolts that could only be opened from this side into place and turning off the power to the external switch.

The whole get up had been designed and installed by Leo about three months ago, just after she had received her latest ongoing commission, and a number of unwanted visitors had shown up.

The whole room was shielded by a thin layer of the same material used in Jango's rebuild, it would take another cybot or something of equal destructive capabilities to get in without her permission.

Considering all this impressive security, one might picture the inner sanctum of Tokyo's top bounty hunter, as some sort of high tech command centre…The dishevelled and scruffy looking apartment would disillusion many.

Whatever might have changed about Meg since Jo's death, her almost chronic inability to keep her personal living space clean, coupled with a psychological blind spot to all and any forms of dirt or mess, meant that the smallish room appeared better suited to some stereotypical male students living space than a professional gun for hire.

The small bed was unmade, there were a number of her 'everyday' clothes lying on the floor where she had dropped them while changing, and the coffee table was buried under discarded fast food containers.

It was all very similar to how things had appeared back in the days she had been working for Sei in what really had been a high tech mobile command centre…back when Jo had still been with them.

With a sigh that should have come from someone much older and more jaded than she, Meg shrugged off her jacket, taking a moment to drape it over the back of a handy chair before moving on to the twin holsters that were simply dropped, the small room echoing with a dull thud as the heavy guns impacted while Meg moved on to her other garments, oblivious to the noise.

As she kicked her boots into one corner of the room, cursing under her breath as her delicate toes managed to strike the steel caps intended to protect them; the auburn haired girl tapped the remote for the portable television she had brought to fill up some of her longer nights, and was rewarded with a near deafening scream as the overacting 'heroine' of some movie or other faced down this week's monster by seemingly attempting to rupture its eardrums and/or brain with her shrieking.

Not really paying much attention to movie itself, Meg distantly remembered when such a tactic had been amongst _her_ repertoire of techniques for dealing with her enemies, in what almost seemed another lifetime.

Movie away from the glare of the screen she pushed open the door to her domicile's bathroom, cranking the twin knobs set into the far wall of the shower up to full spray at maximum heat, and was rewarded with the same faltering pressure as always as she stepped under the lukewarm curtain of water.

Once under the protective embrace of the tepid liquid, she stood, allowing it to flow over her, her eyes, unblinking, never leaving the wall.

Slowly, Meg allowed her head to come to rest against the wall, closing her eyes and focusing on her breathing as she replayed her memories of the past few days, going over her actions, analysing each movement, seeking error, things she needed to practice more in the future and so on.

The only thing that stood out was the time she had wasted before pulling the trigger on Donovan.

She tried to tell herself that she had merely been holding out for every scrape of information he could possibly supply her, but here, alone in her private place of retreat with nothing to distract her but the mute drone of the television, she couldn't bring herself to believe that.

She had hesitated, just like she did every time she had a chance to think about what she was doing for a living now.

It had been a lot simpler collecting bounties before she had been the one holding the gun.

Jo never lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, worrying that she was loosing a little piece of herself every time she pulled the trigger.

Why was that?

The answer was obvious. Jo hadn't been human, Meg was. Jo had been a humanoid cybot, wetware engineered to be the perfect weapon, a killing machine with all the adaptability of a human, and none of their emotional drawbacks.

Jo had died when she came to realised that the desire she felt to protect Meg, would never be realised by the very virtue of her existence.

Weapons, especially powerful or rare ones, attract violence. There would always be a need to kill, to fight as long as even one person knew what she really was. There would always be the chance that one day she wouldn't be fast enough to save Meg, and so, tired of all the death that followed in her wake, disgusted with the reason for her creation and what it had done to the others that had survived before they died, Jo had thrown herself against the head of the organisation that had created her and the others.

An Angel of Judgement informing her creators of her verdict.

All she had had to do to do this, was break the promise she had made Meg while they lay together in the woods after escaping RAPT's capture force thanks to Mario's sacrifice.

She had promised they would run away together.

It had only been a sleepy grunt, but anyone who spent a long period of time around Jo had learned to interpret her thoughts without words, and Meg had had a greater connection to the platinum haired bioweapon than anyone else.

In return for making a lie of their promise, Jo had asked her to make another. To let her leave, to carry out her wish, the only one she had ever had, to keep Meg safe and in turn for Meg to become stronger, to find someone of her own to protect.

That promise had been forced of the redhead in the end, against her wishes, but she intended to keep it.

That was why she had modelled herself so extensively on the woman she had admired and loved the most, but she had learned early on she had limits that didn't apply to her deceased companion.

Meg brushed her eyes gingerly, feeling the swelling receding.

This was the most demonstrative symbol of this weakness. She cried every time she killed, as if something inside were screaming out against the changes she was trying to make to herself. Convulsions would follow until she had effectively disarmed herself and left herself completely open to attack.

"Jo… I sorry", she whispered, a sense of failure welling up inside her, "I'm only human.

Meg stood there long after the water stopped following, shoulders bobbing softly in time with her silent sobs.

Eventually she dragged herself to her bed, neither dressing or turning off the TV as she curled up, naked and shivering amongst the scattered covers, her drenched auburn hair trailing out behind her on the bed like the set of rusted wings on a mechanical angel mourning the loss of its halo.

When sleep eventually claimed her, Meg went without a struggle, welcoming the comforting nothingness, knowing that when she awoke, her current depression would seem but a distant dream as she once more looked to the future.

Her goal, her promise…

She would find someone to protect…or die trying.

At least that way, she would see Jo again outside of her dreams.

* * *

Her peaceful slumber was broken what might have been hours or seconds later by a loud and insistent _bleep_ing that her groggy mind couldn't readily reconcile with anything in her room that was ignorable, and that covered quite a number of items.

"Go 'way", she grumbled, one arm waving around erratically as it she could ward off the intruding noise that way.

When that didn't work she groaned and tried to bury deeper into her bed, piling pillows over her head and holding them down, sitting up with a gasp when she came closer to asphyxiating herself than blocking out the sound.

Cursing with shocking creativity, Meg glared sleepily around the room, looking for the source of her perturbation.

Slightly more awake she finally realised what was making the god-awful racket. It must be the video-fed alert on the laptop she had brought recently, because she had thought it looked cool and might help her find information (and movies) faster.

She'd only discovered what the 'live-cam' software the clerk had advised she buy and install actually did a short time ago, and she was still undecided on whether she should thank or cap the helpful assistant for doing so.

As she bumbled around the room, trying to rake her waist length locks into some semblance of order and wondering why her apartment felt so cold at the moment, she was definitely leaning in favour of the latter.

Several minutes of searching yielded no results.

Stiffling a yawn, Meg smiled as she thought up the perfect way to settle this.

Hopping over small islands of dirty clothes, she hefted her twin holsters, retrieving one of the high calibre guns and ejecting the clip, resting it on the chair her jacket was strewn over the back of.

Meg closed her eyes, focusing solely on her breathing, ears alert, tracking the noise and using it in combination with her mental map of her living space.

Inhaling deeply, Meg released her breath in one even rush, pivoting and dropping to one knee, drawing a bead on the source of the beeping and pulling the trigger.

The bounty hunter opened one eye when she heard the dry click of the empty chamber, observing where she had pointed the weapon.

She was aiming directly at the centre of the bed she had vacated only moments earlier.

"D'uh", she slapped her forehead with her free hand as she tossed the gun aside, her addling memory confirming the hiding place of her errant computer as she crawled underneath the bed, crying out in alarm as her hand brushed a few things she couldn't readily identify, and wasn't sure she wanted to before lighting upon her goal.

"Got you", she cheered, hauling the thing rectangle of steel out and setting it up on the bed before her as she kneeled on the floor, taking a while to figure out how to activate the fed before locating the right button.

The screen was immediately filled by the bored and rather annoyed fourteen-year-old face of possibly the world's greatest hacker. A young girl who went by the name of Ami, an old friend and the only other member of their little group other than Leo who still lived.

Well, technically there was one other, but he didn't really count.

She was tugging at her single thick braid, her only fashion change over the years after Meg had pointed out a child's toy that sported the twin ponytails Ami used to have, and glancing off screen at something as the sound of fingers hitting keys echoed over the link's audio pickup.

"You woke me up you know", Meg said, making her voice sound gruffer and angrier than she really felt.

"Good to see you as well", the brown haired girl responded without looking around from whatever else she was doing, "Fifty-fifty chance, I told Leo you'd either be eating or sleeping…guess I owe him a coke".

Meg stuck her tongue out at the screen.

Ami smirked without even glancing at her, "Like I'm wrong".

"Whatever", Meg sulked, pouting slightly.

"Hehe, ok, I… Why are you naked?", Ami had finally looked at the screen.

Meg had to resist the urge to blush and look down, either would have told her teenaged friend that she hadn't known about her current state of undress, and Ami was bad enough when she didn't have material to work with.

_I guess that explains the draft_, Meg thought, trying to put a positive spin on her embarrassing discovery.

"It's better for your skin to sleep _Au Naturalle_", Meg lied as smoothly as possible, hoping she hadn't left too long a pause before her response.

Ami was silent for a moment before replying, "And what if it had been someone else on the line? A Client, a guy?".

"Depends"

"On what?"

"Is he cute?", came Meg's flippant reply, a wide smile gracing her face as her friend hung her head for a moment in defeat, muttering something, Meg only occasionally picking up words like 'Shallow'.

"So what can I do for you?", Meg asked.

"Put on a bra?", Ami grinned when Meg couldn't stop herself from blushing, "Leo called a little while ago. He wants us to meet him at a restaurant a little ways from your place, he says he has news on the mods for Jango you've been bugging him about".

"Bout time", Meg nodded to herself sagely, "Good for nothing old man, what took him so long?".

"I don't know, being married perhaps", Ami fired back drolly.

"Excuses, excuses", Meg waved one hand dismissively.

Leo had married his girlfriend Takane Katsu about seven months ago, after spending nearly half a year trying to build up the courage to do so.

Katsu was much young than the mechanic, easily young enough to be mistaken for his daughter or niece rather than his wife, and though it didn't usually seem to bother him when they had just been dating, his decision to marry her had brought with it all sorts of questions about how he could in good conscience bind her to someone who would be old and grey (well, greyer), before she'd even hit her thirties.

When Meg had 'accidentally' informed her about his concerns, she had smacked him swiftly and repeatedly with her bokken to drive home the point that such things didn't matter to her, that she loved him… and then once more just on general principle.

Her father had chosen her name more appropriately than he realised.

Ami tapped a few more keys, a small map appearing on Meg's screen in the lower corner of the video window.

"This is the place, try not to get lost or kidnapped along the way, ciao", Ami was gone before Meg could think up a proper retort, but she had the whole walk to think something up.

* * *

Taking a few minutes to dress in something a little more casual than her 'work' clothes, a midriff baring, grey t-shirt with stonewash denim hot-pants, combined with her jacket and a pair of high boots, Meg made her way toward the meeting point at a leisurely pace.

She couldn't have Ami or Leo thinking all they had to do was snap their fingers and she'd appear after all. That sort of thing sent the wrong message.

She had decided against taking her guns. They were cumbersome and heavy, plus what really trouble could she get into, the restaurant wasn't that far away or anything.

Still, she slipped her revolver into the inner pocket of her jacket just to be on the safe side.

Six shots should be more than enough if she needed the firepower.

After detouring around the 'scenic' route such as it existed with this corrupt and decaying metropolis she called home, or rather, one of the safer ones, Meg arrived at her destination, strolling inside and walking straight past the automated attendant that offered to find a spare seat for her on its poorly lit schematic of the establishment's eating area.

Her two companions weren't exactly hard to locate. Just look for the plumbs of smoke or listen for a loud and slightly sarcastic voice and you had found one of them or the other.

Following such smoke signals, Meg slid into Leo and Ami's booth without so much as a whisper, receiving a nod from bored and unenergetic looking Leo while Ami continued to fiddle with a palmtop, dead to the world.

Ami hadn't changed all that much in Meg's humble opinion. Ok so maybe she was a few inches taller than when they had first met, and having finally hit puberty she was beginning to develop as girls her age did, and was as disproportionately proud of her budding 'figure' as any other.

Meg made a mental note to advise a wardrobe change at some point in the conversation. As cute as Ami's pink one piece had been when she was twelve, it was somewhat small and revealing nowadays.

Combine attention-drawing outfits with a blunt, some times abrasive young girl whose invincibility in the cyber realm occasionally made her forget she was mortal here in the real, and you had a recipe for disaster.

Even as she was congratulating herself on being such a wonderful friend, there was a small part of her that couldn't help but wonder just how the younger girl would weasel her way out the inevitable conflict, and just how funny it might be to watch…

"Hi", she said, growing tired of being ignored and waving a hand in front of the other girl's face.

Ami blinked a few times before following the extremity back to its owner.

"Oh, you decided to turn up at last", she tucked the gadget into a pocket, resting one elbow on the table and frowning at the older woman.

Meg just smiled.

"Tell her the good news Leo", Ami said, waving her hand vaguely in his direction.

The older man put out his cigarette reluctantly and leaned back in the booth, eying Meg over the circular rims of his tinned glasses.

"I found the balancer I was telling you about", he said without preamble, a small smile creeping onto his face as a much wider one graced her own.

"You mean it? No lies, you actually got it?", Meg asked, gripping the table to stop herself bouncing with excitement.

They had discovered when Leo had first rebuilt Jo's old Cybot for her, that because unlike Jango's previous pilot, Meg lacked the ability to directly interface with the machine she piloted, that no matter how good she became, her response times were always lower than the Cybot's records showed as being optimum based on combat data recorded when Jo had been in control.

In essence, Jo's unconscious capacity for directly manipulating the responses of her Cybot had meant that in any given situation, she had already set Jango onto a course of action before she gave the confirming manual commands, boosting his reaction times to her wishes beyond that of most top of the range military models of that era.

Unfortunately Meg couldn't do that, and so to compensate, Leo had been…creatively acquiring a number of pieces of rare and experimental hardware over the past eight months or so and doing a few upgrades while Ami had designed a more efficient and flexible OS and AI for Jango Mk II to run it all.

If Leo really did have the final piece, it meant that her beautiful red machine would at long last be complete.

She was practically drooling at the thought.

"Hey Leo, when can I take it out?", she said, leaning over the table separating them a little as Ami shook her head at the antics of the supposedly older and more mature girl.

"It's not a car Meg, it's a work of engineering art", Leo folded his arms, the glow of pride clear in his voice and posture.

"Leeeeeeeeeeo", she whined, "Come on, just a little test run, I won't even shoot the guns, promise".

"You have your fingers crossed", Ami pointed out helpfully, smiling sweetly when Meg gave her the stink eye.

"Not happening Red", Leo told her when she turned her attention back to him, "Mr. S was quite clear that I don't get payed if you so much as touch Jango before your sim scores are up to the standards he set".

Mr. S was the alias of her current employer/backer.

He had contacted her some six months ago and requested she take a job for him investigating a new street drug that had come onto the market, offering a jaw dropping amount of cash up front and even offering to help get Jango repaired, though how he knew about the Cybot was beyond her.

Still the money was good, and her machine was being fixed with no cost to her own rapidly dwindling savings, so she had accepted.

However, her backer had set a condition on her usage of the rebuilt robot, and that had simply put, been that she be able to properly and skilfully pilot and use it. Only he kept raising the bar on the simulations he sent Leo for her to go through.

"But those things are so boring", she complained.

Leo shrugged, "Hey, not my rules Red".

Ami sniggered as Meg flopped onto the table like a balloon with a slow puncture.

The young hacker had like wise been hired by their mutual employer a little under six months ago much to both of their surprise. After the events two years ago, neither girl had heard from the other, both having been left with the assumption that the they were the only survivor of the original four women.

It had been a happy reunion, and they had soon settled into some semblance of the relationship they had had as the youngest members of the previous group.

Of course, the fact that Sei or Jo had always unconsciously acted as a buffer between these two outgoing and energetic personalities quickly became apparent after the fallouts of some of their more spirited debates left Leo nursing headache after headache.

A ringing filled the air and Meg peeked out from behind her arms as Leo fumbled with something in his pocket, taking out a small mobile phone hand holding it up to one ear.

"Moshi moshi?", he asked.

Meg glanced at Ami, mouthing one name '_Katsu?_' at her friend and receiving a knowing smirk and a nod in return.

Meg smiled a cat-like grin.

So, Leo wasn't going to help her bring a little fun into her life huh? That was just fine, she could think of plenty of ways to entertain herself.

"Ne! Leo!", something classic was in order.

The older man grimaced a little, seeing the look in her eyes as she rested her chin on her hands.

"_Meg?"_, she heard the Osaka girl's voice echo over the line, _"Leo? I thought you said you had work?"_

"Calling us 'work' Leo? How cruel", Meg said, sighing mock sadly.

Leo gave her a long suffering look, turning to Ami for help, but the petite brunette only shrugged and sat back in her chair.

"_Us?"_, Katsu's voice went up a little before she managed to bring it back under control, _"No, not this time Meg, I always let you get me worked up, but I'm not falling for it this time"_.

"Sorry Takane, what was that? Leo had me…distracted", she practically purred the last word. You just didn't defy a master that was all there was to it.

"_Not buying it!"_

"Sure, that's probably for the best…so how have you been, seems I have some time now that he's 'busy' with Ami", Meg had to put a hand over her mouth when Leo almost dropped the phone as Katsu bellowed his name.

"Hey! Leave me out of this!", Ami shouted indignantly.

"Yeah Leo", Meg added, "She's just a girl you animal".

She fell back in her seat, hugging her stomach as Katsu's loud and anxious sounding voice blasted out of the phone's small speaker.

Leo eventually managed to calm his jealous wife, promising to do something to make up for everything when he returned and ending the call with a heavy sigh.

Massaging his temples he gave Meg a half-hearted glare, but it was tainted by the faint trace of a smile.

As much as Katsu's jealousy fits backfired initially, they always had interesting results in the long run, and such things helped keep him on his toes in their relationship. Things were certainly never boring.

"You're an embarrassment to yourself and everyone around you", Ami announced, not upset with the prank pulled on Leo, but with the roll she had been forced into in it.

"Whatever. I'm the embarrassing one, hey, does this ring any bells?", Meg clasped her hands together and effected her best 'little girl' expression, "I love you Oni-chan!".

Ami's face paled as Meg's voice went up several octaves and a number of customers leant out of their booths to see what all the racket was about.

"That was two years ago!", she shouted, finding it difficult to moderate the volume her voice as heat rushed to her cheeks, "And I was joking!".

"Suuuuuure", Meg drawled, taking a set of chopsticks out of the dispenser set into the table in front of her, "But you _did_ go on a date with him in the end".

"It wasn't a date! None of you would take me to buy parts so I tricked him into doing it instead", Ami defended herself.

"You went out together, without telling any of us first, he let you ride around with him on that tiny scooter and he spent a lot of money on you…sounds like a date to me", she chuckled at the positively evil look her young friend gave her, while Leo nursed the beginnings of an new headache.

"…Anyone for lunch, Leo's treat", Ami said, hitting upon the only thing that could distract Meg right now.

The redhead's blue eyes became watery and distant, and Ami was half convinced she might start drooling at any moment, the other girl's stomach scaring the people in the next booth when it rumbled loudly.

She glanced at Leo who waved a hand toward the menu, "Go ahead, maybe it will help her concentrate on the sims, whatever helps me finish this faster".

Trying to ignore the terrible shooting pains in his wallet as Meg perused the menu, Leo let himself space a little to ease the transition, filling his mind with thoughts of his work and his wife.

When he returned, there was a small mountain of plates obscuring Meg from view, and Ami looked slightly disturbed along with several other of the gaping patrons of the small restaurant.

"Finished?", he asked, swiping his cash-card through the reader offered by a smiling waitress without looking at the bill for this one woman feast.

There are some things you just really don't need to know.

Meg nodded, sighing happily and closing her eyes.

"Good… Ami, grab her", he said, sliding out of the booth as the smaller girl nodded, latching onto Meg's arm.

Meg struggled to free herself to no avail as Leo hefted the other arm, half guiding, half dragging her out of her seat with Ami's help.

"No…too much soba…can't…break free", Meg grimaced as her bloated stomach protested her thrashing movements violently.

"Suck it up kid", Leo advised, not loosening his grip, Meg was a lot more cunning than people gave her credit for at times, "The sooner we do this, the sooner you get to pilot the real deal".

"Noooooooooooooo!".

The door closed with a soft jingle, leaving the other restaurant goers to sit and wonder just who the hell that strange young woman had been.

There was a loud crash outside, followed by a number of muffled curses.

"Damn it Meg, knock it off! You're acting like a child!"

"Am not!"

Ladies and gentlemen, Tokyo's number one bounty hunter had left the building.

* * *

---Author Notes---

Ok, chapter one down and out of the way, the basics have been set up, so on with the story I guess. Coming soon, Chapter Two: Bounty Hunter 101; Meg faces down gangsters, drug lords, overzealous delivery boys and sadistic computer simulations. No one said being the best would be easy now, did they.

Oh, and anyone wondering about the comment on Katsu's name, her name means 'Punish', so yeah…

Till next time, Betweenheavenandhell


	3. Chapter 2: Bounty Hunter 101: Pt1

Chapter Two: Bounty Hunter 101

Part One:

"Stupid Leo, stupid Ami", Meg groused as she subtly applied pressure to the lever in her right hand, setting off a cascading chain reaction of binary commands that ended with a minute adjustment of her cybot's automated balancer, causing it to lean partially around the wall the gigantic red machine was concealed behind.

"I'm supposed to be number one", she continued her rant as her eyes combed the screen in front of her alert for any signs of her remaining two opponents.

"Damnit, I deserve more respect than this Leo!", she shouted into her audio pickup, sparing a moment to glare down at the restraints that the mechanic and a certain pint-sized hacker had used to make sure she didn't bolt before completing all if these ridiculous simulations.

"Yeah right", Ami's voice came over the cockpit speakers, "Coming from the girl who can't even remember to get dressed before taking a call".

"Ami", Meg's voice was low and threatening, matching her rapidly souring mood. She really, really didn't like wasting her time doing boring things like this. Computer games, which was all this basically was after all, were more Ami's idea of a fun time, not hers.

"What's all this about nude calls?", Leo's inquisitive voice came over the other fed.

"Not a word brat", Meg growled, realising even as she said it, that referring to Ami as 'brat' was not the best way to ensure cooperation.

"Our esteemed professional here forgot to put on a bra… or anything else for that matter before turning on the video-fed when I called her today", Meg was sure she could _hear_ the younger girl smirking, "I saved some screens, I was gonna use them for new ads, but you can have a few copies if you want Leo".

"Hmm, I may take you up on that", Leo managed around a chuckle.

"Dead, both of you are so dead when I get out of this thing", Meg promised darkly, pouting in the dim light of the cockpit's display as laughter echoed over both channels.

Anything else she was about to say was cut short as the wall she had been hiding behind exploded, hurtling her and Jango back under a rain of red-hot concrete splinters.

"Bastard!", Meg shouted angrily as she flipped three switches in rapid succession and hauled back on the controls in her left hand, setting Jango into a backward roll as his metallic spine hit the dirt.

Waiting until her status screen and inner ear agreed she was upright again, she slapped another switch with her right hand, the previous three snapping back to their default setting and causing Jango to straighten out of his roll.

_Not bad, the response is more than half a second faster_, she thought admiringly as she feathered the pedal under her left foot, launching Jango skyward as another explosive round detonated where he had come out of his last manoeuvre.

"Not this time pal", she said with a predatory smirk, finger tightening around the triggers on her controls as Jango drew the mammoth twin replicas of the guns Jo had left her, the display narrowing and highlighting the form of a smaller, silver bodied cybot, a list of meaningless data scrolling past too fast for her to really read it.

A set of crosshairs appeared, flashing and pulsing rhythmically as Meg adjusted her aim.

At the peak of her arc, she depressed the trigger and a high velocity round, bigger than a small car tore from the barrel of her cybot's weapon, crossing the distance in a heartbeat and shredding the other machine's sensor bank as it tore through it's 'head' just above where the left eye would have been on a human.

Suitably blinded the mobile suit staggered for a moment as its AI attempted to balance it while seeking other means to identify and eliminate her.

"Night, night", Meg called cheerfully as Jango touched down, sliding back a few feet before she could check his movement and levelled one of her guns at the blinded enemy.

A shot rang out, but it was not hers.

Jango's hand exploded in a flower of steel and circuitry, the gun it had been holding sent flying into the distance, obliterating a small wall and effectively burying itself in the resulting rubble.

"What the-", scanning quickly left and right, Meg located her attacker, the second cybot stood atop a small rise, the stock of its riffle tucked close against one metallic shoulder while it sighted down the scope affixed to the top.

_What's going on here?_, the sims had never done anything like this before. They had cooperated a number of times, but never this efficiently, and they had never tried to defend each other before.

Jango made a prodigious leap, another round glancing off the armoured suit's shoulder plating as it sailed through the air, landing with a hissing of hydraulics and a dangerous groan amongst the ruins of an old warehouse complex.

_Good_, Meg thought as she swiftly moved Jango alongside the wall facing her opponents last known position. The new balancer was working just as well as Leo had promised it would, having enabled Jango to retract into a successful jumping position and execute the move vital seconds faster than he would have previously been able to with herself at the helm.

Of course, this was only a simulation, but if the real thing came even close to this kind of performance…

Meg eased the controls forward a fraction, sidestepping Jango over to a narrow crack in the wall that would be out of line with her enemies riffle for long enough to catch a quick glimpse of his current position.

Meg imagined she could hear Jango's sensory cameras whirling and clicking in imitation of the way she stared intensely at what they revealed, at once both relieved and worried.

Relieved because her latest foe appeared to have abandoned his previous post, a light trail of dust giving away his position as he moved amongst the ruined towers of the industrial complex this sim was set in… but worried because the other machine, the one that should have been disabled, was gone.

She knew from past experience that this was not how the sims worked.

A defeated unit and its wreckage would remain exactly where it was unless moved by either the pilot or one of the AI's until the program ran its course one way or the other.

In other words, she didn't have only this strangely behaving sniper-bot to worry about, but the demolitions model that she had though disabled.

Meg's finder twitched irritably on the trigger, eager to find these two and blow them to pieces.

Cybot programs sneaking around, defending each other in an almost human fashion… something about that irked her even more than being forced to sit through this ridiculous game.

"Come on… where are you hiding", she whispered aloud, jogging Jango lightly to the other side of the building and crouching him low near the remains of an ancient press machine.

A drop of sweat snaked its way down from her temple to her chin.

At first, nothing seemed to answer, but then she saw it, a faint glint of light from a polished metal surface.

"Bingo", a slow smile spread across her face as she sent Jango into another leap, vaulting the crumbing wall shielding her from her enemy, kicking off the wall to gain extra forward momentum.

The sniper-bot turned to track her movement, but too slow, it would never raise it's riffle in time…

_Why? Why isn't it even trying?_, even as Meg watched the solitary machine made no effort to do anything other than track her, its weapon immobile in cold steel hands.

Machines shouldn't know the meaning of futility, and thus…

Meg let out a startled cry as the explosive round hit Jango like an invisible fist, buckling the chest armour and warping the remains of the damaged arm with shear heat.

The cockpit shuck violently, battering her lithe form with vibrations she had never experienced in a simulation before.

It reverberated again as Jango struck the earth rattling Meg's teeth in her head as he scraped across the barren and dusty ground with a tortured shriek.

A seemingly endless number of alerts flashed and blared in her face, diagrams she could only vaguely identify displaying problem after problem, while a schematic of her cybot showed the most crucial areas of damage.

"Leo! What the hell was that!", she screamed, not caring that she didn't need to shout for him to hear her.

"Feedback loop, something new to this version of the program", Leo's voice came back, seemingly unperturbed by her outburst.

"And no one told me about this, because!"

"Mr S said we shouldn't tell you or it would spoil the test", Ami replied, cutting off the audio feed to the simulator as Meg launched into a list of explicatives that had Leo whistling low in admiration.

"Girl's got quite a set of lungs on her doesn't she", he commented when Meg eventually wound down, only a faint panting audible over the pickup.

"You mean a big mouth right?", Ami asked without taking her eyes off the status screen in front of her, the various biometric data collected by the cockpit throughout this little exercise lain out before her.

_Substantial activity within the amygdale and frontal lobes, whatever that means, elevated heart rate and respiration but nothing is redlining or flashing so I guess she's fine for now_, Ami reasoned, feeling her reflexive flash of concern evaporate.

She and Meg really did have an almost sibling relationship as anyone familiar would discern by watching them bicker, which was the reason she had taken responsibility for watching over the med data as well as the programming end of things.

Luckily her self appointed image as a girl genius had prevented either Meg or Leo from asking any questions and discovering she knew less about biology than most children her age with a highschool education.

"Yeah, that too", Leo snorted, lighting up another cigarette and shrugging philosophically when Ami wrinkled up her nose at him.

"Disgusting old man", she said when he blew a smoke ring her way for good measure.

"That's what Katsu tells me", he smirked as she paled, the hyper-intelligent young girl's brain coming up with a number of possible interpretations to that statement.

"I'm fine in case anyone cares", Meg's voice called over his deep laugh.

"Oh don't be such a baby", Ami replied as Meg fought sluggish controls to bring Jango back to his knees.

Meg raised her mid-finger in the general direction of the cockpits camera and returned her attention to the battlefield.

The two cybots that had effectively just ambushed her remained where they were, observing her silently, the charred wreckage that had once been the demolitions-bot's optic sensors hanging in a melted mess down one side of it's 'face'.

Meg checked Jango's output levels and damage summary. He had suffered greatly in that last attack. The chest plate had bowed inward, effectively sealing her in had this been for real, though it hadn't concaved enough to crush her or damage the actual cockpit or the sim would have ended already. His left hand and gun were long gone, along with most of the left arm now, only a burnt stub hanging in its place. The right knee servo was also slow to respond, though the new balancer had already compensated.

More praise be to the wonders of modern technology.

Power levels were only at sixty-percent however, and thus operating at full combat capacity in this state would drain his cells in less than half and hour.

The soundless staring match continued, a faint simulated breeze whipping up the dust between them into a minor frenzy.

Fortunately her remaining weapon seemed to be ok, the AI reporting the firearm to be operating within acceptable perimeters as far as it could discern.

Meg trickled power into the damaged right servo and Jango eased upright a fraction more with agonising slowness.

The response was instant, but it did not come from were she expected.

The moment she moved D-bot's weapon swung to track her but when she froze it didn't fire.

"What in the…", Meg carefully requested an update on the trashed sensor bank her first assault should have left D-bot sporting, moving gradually, as if the cybots could see her movements inside the cockpit.

Meg's brow creased at the results displayed. Jango reported that all sensory modules in the enemy demolitions unit had been neutralised… so then, how was it managing to aim at her?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ok, that's not right", Leo said, frowning at the screen and pausing to transport his cancer-stick from his mouth to his ear, "Oi, did you screw with the program or something?".

"No", came back Ami's indignant reply, the slight girl sitting a little straighter in her chair in the workstation atop the stairs to his left, "If I wanted to change something you think I'd be so sloppy and obvious about it?"

Leo conceded the point with a noncommittal grunt, tapping a few keys on the board in front of him.

All the hardware was working right, and a quick glance showed Jango knelt below them plugged into Ami's makeshift mainframe by a small hive of wires just as they had left him, nothing arcing or missing.

"Ok, so if you're not doing it, how is that thing aiming? I can tell from the readouts it can't _see_ anything let alone target it", Leo brushed his hand across his latest accumulation of stubble and leant back in his creaky chair, "Its got to be getting targeting data somehow though".

"Let me see your screen for a moment", Ami said, leaning over his shoulder without waiting for an ok, small digits flashing over his keyboard and seeming to throw his computer into a mild fit as it spat back information faster than his aging eyes could keep up with.

"What are you looking for kid?", he asked, moving out of her way when he realised before her just what was pressing against his shoulder.

"…There…", the visual assault abruptly halted, only a single diagram remaining, showing a series of pulsing peeks and troughs.

"A comm signal? So what?"

"They're linked, the sniper is feeding data directly into the other's targeting computer, remote controlling it as backup"

Leo raised a sceptical eyebrow. It was perfectly possible to remote control a Cybot like that, but doing so tended to kill independent motion and was only possible with AI units, as a human would find it near impossible to interpret all the skewed data unless it was first processed and altered to suit their mental representation of their relation to the target.

He'd heard of people remote controlling heavy-fire units like this as backup, but never two AI's using each other in this fashion. The size of the computer core needed to run such an operation while keeping the targeting unit mobile and able to defend and attack at the same time would be immense, or at the very least expensive.

Just what was their benefactor thinking programming such an unlikely situation?

Was he just stringing Meg and themselves along for some reason, or did he really think Meg had what it took to surpass such obstacles?

Something in the mechanic's gut churned in a way it hadn't since the days he had spent dealing with Jango's first owner.

On the screen to his right, he watched as Meg made her move, chasing away all thoughts of the mysterious 'Mr. S'

Whatever the reason, it could wait for now, but he had the feeling none of them were going to like it when they found out.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Thrusting both controls forward, Meg stamped her foot down hard on the right most pedal, sending Jango surging out of his crouch into a low run, straight at the sniper.

Once more the demolitions cybot began to track her, the wide barrel of its oversized grenade launcher swinging to face her as she ate the distance between herself and her target.

_Come on, just a few more feet_, she prayed silently watching as the blast radius diagram in the top right of her screen drew closer to the one she desired.

Still the D-bot drew closer to acquiring a lock.

An alarm sounded as the red tinted circle changed to encompass both her targets in their own blast.

Realising what she was trying to do, the damaged machine snapped its barrel upright, breaking engagement at the same moment the sniper set its feet apart, bringing its high powered riffle into shooting position and drawing a bead on her advance.

"Got ya", she smirked.

As the sniper managed to find a lock on Jango's already battered chest plate, the red cybot suddenly dropped from sight.

Using all of her built up velocity, Meg threw Jango into a diving slide, like a runner reaching for home base, flipping Jango onto his back mid dive as the powerful round of the sniper's gun shredded the air overhead.

As her cybot passed between the legs of her foe, Meg let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.

The first shot hit nothing but air, the second ripped a path from the sniper's chin through to the top of its head and the third pierced the weak armour between the legs and impacted the power core, shorting every system within the enemy machine in seconds.

Deprived of its controller, the demolition cybot scrambled to try and complete its mission without any means to distinguish friend, foe or even just its environment and crashed to the ground as it tried to turn faster than its already stressed balancer could cope with.

"Alright! That's right, go me! I….hey!", the screen turned black and the wall in front of her cracked open to admit what to her maladjusted eyes was a blinding stream of sunlight.

Meg screwed shut her eyes under the hateful assault of the suns rays and hissed like a b-movie vampire.

"You ok in there Red?", Leo called over the PA system, receiving a repeat of Meg's earlier noise for his concern.

Her sight had returned by the time Leo and Ami made it down from the control room to the hangar Leo used as a repair bay, and she had a full view of their barely contained smirks as they looked at her sweaty, squinting and strapped down form.

"What?", she demanded, glaring when neither apparently trusted themselves enough to answer without laughing, "Why not take a picture, it would-"

She was cut short when a flash of light sent her back into the realms of blindness.

As spots danced across her vision, Meg could make out Ami slipping her palm-top back into the pocket of her pink one-piece.

"Not bad today, though I've seen better", Leo commented as he worked on her restraints, Meg climbing past him and jumping down as soon as she was free, hobbling for a moment on legs that seemed to want to cramp as protest of their recent mistreatment.

"What are you talking about", she said, straightening when she was able and tossing her hair back, tucking a few sweat clogged strands behind one ear, "I beat the stupid thing didn't I?".

"Actually, technically, you failed", Ami provided when all Leo did was offer a shrug and take another drag on his omnipresent cigarette.

"…Eh?"

"You beat them sure, but you got yourself trapped in the cockpit with no way out and little power left in the process as well as heavy damage to almost every system", the smaller girl said, checking points off on her fingers.

"You mean I have to do all of that again?", Meg whined hanging her head.

"No, like I say, it's only a technicality, you figured out that they were remote linked which was apparently the purpose of this one according to the post-sim data we got", Ami tapped a finger against her chin thoughtfully, "That reminds me, how_ did_ you know what they were doing anyways?"

"…Erm, its one of those bounty hunter things, you know, like a danger sense", Meg said, smiling a trifle too widely.

"A danger sense?", Ami deadpanned disbelievingly, "You mean you charged them without knowing that the sniper couldn't fire until he put the other cybot on hold!"

"Hey it worked didn't it! I was taking them by surprise!", Meg shouted, her sheepishness gone in light of the younger girl's criticism.

"They're machines you half-wit! They don't get surprised!"

"Can I just-", Leo tried to intervene before this little debate erupted into a full blown argument.

"NO!", both women shouted at once, turning mutually fierce expressions upon him, faces that might have cowed a younger man, or at least one who hadn't been married to a woman like his wife.

"I just thought you might like to know we had company before the screaming started", he pointed out, gesturing other his shoulder with his thumb at the skinny looking guest.

Barely Meg's height without the rollerblades adorning his feet, his face hidden by a combination of ski mask and bike helmet, the young man was toying absently with the strap of his batter red rucksack while he waited by the hangar's maintenance door.

"I'm out of here", Meg said, brushing past Leo and their guest as he stepped inside, ignoring him as he tried to say something to her.

"Meg-"

"No, I've been stuck in that stupid thing all day, it's about time I went out and had a little fun! I'll call if I need anything, bye", and with that she was gone, leaving Ami and Leo alone with masked rollerblader.

"Um, yeah, sorry bout all that, can I help you with something?", Leo asked into the awkward silence.

"I have a package for a Miss Megumi Carpenter", the boy's voice as distorted by his mask, almost robot like in a cheesy kind of way.

"That was her just now", Ami answered slowly. No one should have known Meg would be here, so why was there a delivery for her to this address?

"I see…"

"I'll collect for her, she'll be back later", Leo said, his face hard as he stepped forward, hand held out expectantly.

"I'm afraid that just won't do", the courier replied with a slow shake of his head, "This package must reach the hands of the recipient only… I believe I can catch up if I hurry".

"No need, look, I'll sign for it and-"

"No", the courier's statement held an air of solemn finality, "Thank you, if you'll excuse me".

Before Leo could object again he had ducked back out of the door, the sound of wheels clacking against concrete fading rapidly into the distance.

"…Well…", Leo said, "That sure didn't seem suspicious at all".

"Yeah", Ami agreed, "… What do you think it is? A bomb or something, I know a lot of people probably don't like Meg much right now".

"No idea kid, but I don't think it's a good idea to hang around and find out, lets go".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- Author Notes---

Hey there, sorry about the long update time, but I've been trapped by a seemingly endless flow of ideas for my Love Hina universe. Hopefully it should be worth your wait.

I've had to spilt this chapter as I realised it would be to large as a whole, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait a tad longer for the gangster action originally promised.

I'll see you all in part two.

Until next time, Betweenheavenandhell


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